A synagogue was erected in the square surrounded by houses, and was accessed through a passage gate of one of the houses. In 1520, after a fire in the town and under the threat of the townspeople leaving, King Zygmunt I the Old expelled the Jews from Miedzyrzecz.

They returned when the townspeople reneged on their pledge to take over Jewish taxes. They were already mentioned in the privilege of the Margrave of Brandenburg of 1532 and the inspection of the Międzyrzecz property in 1564-1565. In 1607 and 1613, the Jews were expelled again. Each time they returned, and in 1633, King Władysław IV permitted them to rebuild the synagogue and granted them numerous privileges, which became the cause of another dispute with the townspeople. During the Swedish Invasion in 1656, due to false accusations of favouring the Swedes, Hetman Czarniecki's soldiers murdered about 100 families. The Jewish community ceased to exist for some time.

As a result of the Second Partition of Poland (1793), Międzyrzecz came under Prussian rule. The census showed that 700 of the 2,510 inhabitants were Jewish. A great fire in 1824 engulfed the eastern part of the town, including the Jewish quarter and the synagogue. A new synagogue was built two years later and existed to this day. It was set on fire during the Kristallnacht. This was rather a symbolic act, as the Germans had already converted the building into a warehouse. After the war, the State Treasury took over and has now been converted into a shop. The synagogue has been listed in the register of historical monuments since 1976.

After the Jews were given full citizenship rights, migration to the larger cities in western Prussia began. In 1842, there were 1,190 Jews in Miedzyrzecz; it was a record number. Shortly before World War I, the community was already ten times smaller. German-Jewish relations were reasonably good until the onset of the Great Economic Crisis (1929-1933) and the rise of the Nazis to power. Jews, 105 in 1933, out of a total population of 7,158 people, began to be held responsible for the difficult economic situation, leading to riots and arrests. During the "Kristallnacht" (9-10 November 1938), the SA demolished Jewish houses and shops, and men were imprisoned in the town hall basement. The last Jews lived in Miedzyrzecz until 1942, when they were arrested and deported to ghettos and camps.

The Description

The Jewish cemetery was located on the so-called "Jewish Hill" (German: Judenberg) by the road to Skwierzyna, about 2 km north of the town centre. It is difficult to determine today the area it occupied, but it is assumed that, like the cemetery in nearby Skwierzyna, it was about 2.5-3 hectares.

The date of establishment of the cemetery in Miedzyrzecz is unknown. It was probably founded at the time of the establishment of the Jewish community. A short description of it from the 1870s, written by Adolf Peritz, a student at the Jewish school at the time, survived. This is how he described the cemetery (excerpt): "... a stunningly beautiful location on a wooded hill where the graves were set in permanent greenery [...] The extensive cemetery, already heavily occupied, indicated the long age of the community. The cemetery was always well maintained". Due to a lack of sources. It is difficult to say whether the cemetery was devastated during the Nazi era. On a German map from 1944, an open-pit mine is marked on the "Jewish Hill" slope, next to the pre-burial house. Inspection of the cemetery by an inhabitant of Miedzyrzecz in 1946 shows a destroyed pre-burial house, visible fragments of a metal fence, some matzevot knocked over, and the area wildly overgrown.

The devastation and progressive liquidation began in 1947, when the reconstruction of the road from Międzyrzecz to Skwierzyna began. Gravestones and gravel from the cemetery were used to rebuild the section between Międzyrzecz and Głębokie Lake. This material was used as ballast. The next decommissioning stage occurred between 1955 and 1956, when a beach was established on Lake Głębokie. At the end of the 1960s, a shooting range operated on the cemetery's site. The robbery of granite and marble tombstones began then. The sandstone matzevot was preserved until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when liquidation was formal and legal.

Seven matzevot have survived to the present day. One is in the collection of the Miedzyrzecka Land Museum (Polish: Muzeum Ziemi Międzyrzeckiej), which also houses an exhibition devoted to local Jews. The remainder was used to install a symbolic lapidary in close vicinity of the cemetery grounds. The lapidarium and memorial stone were unveiled in 2015. Today, the S3 express road runs through the middle of the non-existent cemetery hill.

Właściciel praw autorskich do opisu: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN.